1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for determining optimum values of design parameters, which makes it possible to determine optimum values of design parameters extremely easily and efficiently in a short time in product and system development.
2. Related Art
In product and system development in various industrial fields, a very important aspect of the development process is how to determine various kinds of design parameters such as materials, various dimensions including length, width, height, depth, thickness, diameter and pitch of products and components and parts constituting the products, and the relationships between components thereof including location, angle, distance and operation conditions. Therefore, a vast number of experiments are required to determine their optimum values, particularly, ina product required to meet several performance items, while it is also difficult to efficiently determine optimum values of a plurality of parameters even from the results of such experiments. Therefore, such determination must often rely on the experience and intuition of highly skilled persons.
On the other hand, methods have been suggested for obtaining optimum values by making a mathematical model containing given design parameters and required performance items (i.e., multivariate analysis). Practically, however, it is almost impossible to prepare such a mathematical model during development of products. In particular, when there are several required performance items and they should be determined systematically, preparation of such mathematical model itself requires a great number of experiments and, even if such a mathematical model can be prepared, it cannot always function well because of other factors including, for example, how relative importance is given to each required performance item, tradeoff among a plurality of the required performance items and the like.
A method utilizing the Taguchi method, which is used in the field of quality engineering, has also been known. However, this method can be used for only cases involving a single required performance item. Therefore, development of products by this method takes a lot of time and the result sometimes contradicts other items.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a method and system which make it possible to efficiently determine optimum values of design parameters using data from a small number of experiments. Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for easily determining the optimum values, which does not require experience of skilled artisans or the construction of a mathematical model for every design parameter.